Waleed Aly questions why begging is illegal on The Project

Daniella Miletic

Waleed Aly posed this question on Channel Ten's The Project on Monday night, delivering a compelling editorial slamming cuts to federal funding for community services programs. These cuts, Aly argued, had led to more poverty-stricken Australians desperately seeking help in a country where - in many states, including Victoria - it is a crime to ask for it.

Waleed Aly: Fined for being poor

"It's argued that the money society gives to beggars would be better spent on homeless services but here is the problem: we are actually giving those people less money as a matter of government policy," the co-host said. "Joe Hockey's now infamous 2014 budget slashed $70 million from community services programs and that is despite experts telling us that almost 120,000 people had to be turned away from homelessness shelters last year," he said. "That's 329 every night being told they will have to find somewhere else to sleep. And of those desperate people, 36 per cent are escaping domestic violence."

Good to see @theprojecttv cover devastating impact of homelessness. Why punish homeless by cutting fed $ for services +entrenching poverty

In the segment Aly, also a Fairfax Media columnist, went on to say that in South Australia more people are being arrested for begging and fines are $250. Aly went on to report that a Melbourne legal service had even reported clients seeking help for fines for begging totalling up to $50,000.

He said that he thinks begging is illegal not because it fuels drug habits and encourages cycles of homelessness, as is often argued ("It only encourages them and prevents them doing something useful with their lives," Rita Panahi wrote in the Herald Sun last year).

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Aly believes begging is illegal because it is an issue that people don't want to know about, because it makes people look at poverty, and poverty is ugly.

"Here is a thought, maybe the reason that we are treating homeless people this way isn't that we are worried about fuelling their drug habit or prolonging their cycle of poverty otherwise we wouldn't be cutting funding to the services that would address those very problems.

"Maybe it is the same sense of injustice in this video that makes each of us recoil; that is the thing that we don't want to face. Maybe, the reason we are punishing the homeless for begging us to help isn't because we object to taking some coins out of our pocket. Maybe our real objection is the guilt we are forced to carry away with us when their poverty is rubbed in our face."